By RENEE RICHARDSON
Senior Reporter

A Brainerd company is quietly keeping thousands of pounds of plastic from ending up in the landfill, but recycling wasn't where the business had its roots.

Central Converting, tucked away on a side street near the fairgrounds, started in the Twin Cities in 1984. David Wessel, who grew up in Brainerd and graduated from then Washington High School, started as a sheet metal fabricator. He took those skills and found a niche in cutting material to a specific size, namely the thin release film used with manufacturing circuit boards.

A contractor with Advance Circuits in Roseville, Central Converting was taken along for the ride as the circuit board company rose to become one of the largest manufacturers in the world.

Orders, cutting copper foil and release films, grew from about three per day to 400. Wessel said Advance Circuits had other suppliers but his small business - employing 11 - had staying power with the manufacturer because of the work quality. Wessel's six children all worked in the family business for a time. But times changed and circuit board business went to China.

So five years ago Wessel and his wife Kathy moved their business to Brainerd. It was a homecoming for the Brainerd graduate. His first location at the Northern Pacific Center was within viewing distance of his father's long-time shoe repair shop on Washington Street.

Their cutting abilities continue to bring in material as manufacturers send them jumbo rolls to be cut to size like those perforated cleaning sheets that pop out of the container for a company in St. Louis. Those cleaning supply orders were recently fueled by a demand from the H1N1 flu virus.

For their own product line, Central Converting produces an absorbent pad that is placed in packages of raw meat. An entrepreneur has them cutting screens to fit in the back window on pickup trucks with the screens personalized with logos from sports teams or even Harley Davidson.

Central Converting was cutting large rolls of anti-corrosive material used by the automobile industry. But the recession reduced that business. Looking for other products led the Wessels to recycling plastics.

Business was flat following the move here and the Wessels put their money into re-establishing here just when the recession hit. But the last two years have seen a growth in sales, 30 percent in 2008 and 48 percent last year, Wessel reported.

Now used plastic paint pails and scrap/trim material from the recreational vehicle manufacturing and food trays are among the items shredded into tiny bits available for re-use. They come back as plastic planks as building materials, manhole rings, playground equipment and are even remade into fresh, new five-gallon pails. So the process can be repeated numerous times.

Plastic that once cost money to throw away and took up valuable landfill space is now being chipped for re-use.

"It works out well," said John Maattala, Crow Wing County Solid Waste technician who helped the Wessels find additional contacts.

Now Central Converting picks up pallets of plastic paint buckets from Fridley, among other cities. They recycle plastic pipes and bakery pails. Wessel created an aspirator to strip away labels and the last vestiges of paint from the used buckets.

Central Converting now has 43,000 pounds of ground plastic ready to sell. Samples are sent to buyers who can then test to make sure the plastic meets their specifications. The company employs five counting the Wessels with Jeremy Moddes, shop foreman, Jeff Schroenghamer, grinder operator, and Tim Fredrickson, sales manager.

Wessel's goal is to sell the ground plastic to injection molders who will be able to know just what the plastic was used for in its previous life. It's been a soft market, but Wessel said his company has grown about 100 percent during the last three years, not the easiest accomplishment in this economy.

And on top of that Wessel said he calculates his company kept 100,000 pounds out of the landfill in 2009 alone.

"All of our customers really worked with us to make us successful," Wessel said.

RENEE RICHARDSON may be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.